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Comment by pshposh | Hacker News Reader

But what if we are the first and no filter exists at all?

That's almost equally depressing. "Really, we're the best the universe has to offer?"

That's not depressing. It gives us a moral imperative to transplant Earth-origin life onto every somewhat concentrated mass that we can reach.

Then we can wait a few billion years, and the universe will likely have generated a superior successor species which can then re-seed over everything we had previously tilled, and then some.

And they'll all be rubber-forehead aliens to one another, because they'll be billionth cousins, a few million times removed.

> It gives us a moral imperative to transplant Earth-origin life onto every somewhat concentrated mass that we can reach.

And in the very likely scenario that we are never able to "reach" outside our solar system... Then what?

> And in the very likely scenario that we are never able to "reach" outside our solar system... Then what?

Then we need to prepare for the Gliese 710 arrival over the next million and change years. [0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_710

Then we will either be literally extinct or at least economically extinct--permanently unable to recover space-launch technology. Then Earth has to gin up another dominant species capable of reaching the stars with whatever time it may have remaining.

We already have the technology to reach outside the solar system. It launched in 1977.

We will have the capability to transplant microorganisms to extrasolar planets long before moving humans that may have 100kg or more to one. Which is good, because it may take a while for the algae to get established anyway. And if for some reason higher species never show up, that celestial object won't have to overcome the steep initial hurdle of abiogenesis.

Who is to say we aren't already transplants just looking to reconnect with our cousins?

That's what I'm saying!! Panspermia

Think about it, in so many sci Fi, the aliens are pretty similar to us. Carbon based, have DNA, etc.

If we seeded the galaxy with our life then a billion years from now we might get a star wars type reality where many species coexist together all because we seeded every corner of the galaxy.

This is the best Earth has to offer is how I prefer to think about it. Though I am not even sure humans are the best we have to offer anyways.

I expect the first species that is physically capable of colonising the stars will /only just/ be capable of it.

Isn't that highly unlikely due to the age of the universe vs age of the Solar System?

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